“No.” Raina shook her head. “It’s all mind interaction. Until you were on these stairs, you didn’t even physically touch.”

There was something so sad about that, having such an intimate fantasy, with no actual touching. It all made her sad.

“I’ll be taking Theo with me,” Ruby said. Her voice was even. Calm as death. A stupid metaphor, since there was nothing calm about death. Death was just…. silent. Eternal. A cold wind blowing across stone on a desolate hillside. “I’ll give him a sleeping draught to make him comfortable. For the sake of our friendship these many years, and with no other choice, I’ll have to trust you with that other matter I gave you. But when I get back, we’re done. This is unforgivable, Raina.”

“Nothing is unforgivable, Ruby. Not when it’s done out of love.”

The Darkness surged forward at that. It barked out of her throat in a harsh, shrill laugh. From the startled look on Raina’s face, and the sudden tension she felt from Derek, Ruby knew they detected it, that force that gave her laugh a sibilant echo. “Yeah,” she said. “You keep thinking that.”

I hope you never have to face the truth the way I did.

Pushing past Raina, she left the house, her back straight, though her body felt brittle as glass. Neither one tried to stop her.

THE MOMENT THE DOOR CLICKED SHUT, DEREK WAS down the stairs. He looked torn between wanting to go after Ruby and having to deal with Raina. Raina would have preferred the former, because she wasn’t in the mood to deal with a male tantrum, but he pivoted on one booted foot, squared off with her. “What the hell is the matter with you?”

Raina arched a perfect brow. “You should be thanking me. I’ll bet you didn’t know your little witch had such naughty thoughts—”

Derek caught her by the throat. Raina found herself slammed against the wall, pinioned there not just by a powerful, angry man’s strength, but by the energy that swirled out from him like a furnace blast. She faced the sorcerer who was a Guardian of the Light, who’d gone toe-to-toe with some of the Underworld’s most frightening demons.

“You forget yourself, witch,” he said with chilling menace, underscoring it. “Cut the shit.” That branding iron was suddenly in his hand, called from the room above as simple as a blink, a mere rearrangement of matter and air currents. He pressed the unyielding steel against her windpipe. “This part was real. You made me hurt her, cause her pain. You betrayed her trust.”

“It’s a tracking mark,” Raina said with a calmness she didn’t feel. He could shove the iron up into her brain with one effortless movement, charge it with energy and turn her into a shower of confetti over her pricey Persian rugs. But that didn’t bug her as much as him holding her helpless like this. Being manhandled just pissed her off in ten different ways. “Unable to be removed. You’ll never lose her again. That brand is your mark, a physical connection between the two of you that can’t be broken. You can thank me after you get your goddamn hands off me.”

With an oath, he threw the branding iron away from himself. It shimmered and vanished before it touched the floor. He let Raina go, though, his lip curling in a silent snarl as he moved back to the stairs, rubbing a hand over his face and the back of his neck. “I’m going to ask you a question, and I want an answer. I won’t ask twice. What happened to her, Raina?”

She had half a mind to give him a nasty jolt, try to turn him into one of Circe’s pigs, but she couldn’t outmatch him. Beyond that, something more important was at stake than his bad manners, or the possibility that she had pushed things a little far. Well, tough shit. She had as much right to act on her hurt and anger as they did.

“I can tell you what I know, but it’s what I don’t know that’s key to it all. She lost a baby, Derek. Yours, in case you had any doubt.”

The anger evaporated, sucked out of the room. When he turned, a stunned look on his face, Raina’s own temper settled. He actually went a shade paler, making her feel an annoying pinch of regret. “Derek….”

He held up a quelling hand, his jaw tightening. “Keep talking.” But his voice had a hoarse note, and there was a swirl of thoughts moving behind the keen eyes. She pressed her lips together.

“It was during the Unseelie conflict.”

He’d told Ruby he had to deal with a problem in the Fae world, and, of course, while he was there, he wouldn’t be able to contact her. While he’d teasingly assured Ruby it wouldn’t be like the stories, where he emerged three hundred years after everyone he knew was dead and gone, he had warned time moved a little differently there and he might be out of touch for a few months. Raina had seen the worry in Ruby’s eyes, the worry she always had when Derek left her to face Goddess-knew-what.

It turned into the second longest stretch of time Ruby had been out of contact with Derek since their relationship had begun. As a few months stretched into more, the impending baby had been a blessing for a lot of reasons. Aside from the obvious distraction it provided, Raina could tell carrying his child changed Ruby for the better, settled some things in her. Gave her more confidence in herself. She’d told Raina straight out that when Derek came back this time, she was going to want to make some commitments with him she’d never been willing to consider before.

“That’s a good thing,” Raina had told her bluntly. “Because Derek Stormwind is as old-fashioned as they get. I don’t care how old he is; that baby’s not going to be born without a ring on your finger.”

If he gets back in time. Raina had held that thought back, but she knew Ruby appreciated hearing the other, even if the thought of marriage turned her an amusing three shades whiter. Raina guessed that Ruby’s idea of commitment with Derek had been a more gradual plan. But no matter how much she goaded him, Raina knew men pretty damn well, and she had no doubt that Ruby Night Divine was it for Derek. He’d just been waiting all these years for her to become her own person, and reach that point herself.

The tragedy was, for the first time in her life, Ruby had hit that sweet spot. With the baby growing inside her, there’d been a peace and quiet strength to her that Raina and Ramona both had been glad to see, even as they teased her unmercifully about it.

“The Unseelie conflict.” Derek’s expression clouded. “I was there for two months, and when I came back out, thirteen had passed here. Damn mage tricked me, got the upper hand and distorted time.”

Raina nodded. “She discovered she was pregnant about a month after you left. She made it to eight months. Knew it was going to be a girl.”

Her voice had softened, her words getting more clipped, because, hard-edged as she could be, they’d shopped for that baby, planned for it. She and Ramona were going to be her god-aunts, Goddess help the poor babe.

Derek sank down on the bottom steps, a big man whose strength was suddenly not so certain. Damn it, she really was a complete and total bitch. She’d told the man he’d lost his daughter the same way she’d tell him the basement of his house had flooded, or his car had been wrecked by a careless relative.

She couldn’t fix that, but she did keep her tone quiet, gentle, now. And she kept going, because she knew he needed to hear all of it to understand. “She was crossing the street with some groceries, was thinking of other things, in her head like she can be sometimes, and a car came around the corner….”

“You were already out here. In North Carolina. She was all alone.” He spoke stiffly.

Raina recalled that anguish, a familiar constriction in her chest. “Yes. She didn’t let me know what had happened until she was out of the hospital, a week after. She called, told me not to come, if you can believe it.” Her tight, hard smile had nothing but brittle pain in it. “I should have known something was wrong, because as closely linked as we three are…. we should have felt something when it happened.

“I was on the next plane out, and of course Ramona went with me. Shows how upset I was, not thinking how likely it was she could have caused the plane engine failure.” The grim humor was a quick flash, not enough to dispel the seriousness of the moment. “When we got there, Ruby had changed. She would get cold so abruptly, so distant. In hindsight, I was catching the whiff of Dark magic infecting her, but it was overlaid with so much grief, I missed it. Then you came back. I thought that would break her out of it, but instead you left.”

“The soul spell.” He spat it out like the vile curse it was.

“Yes. I really wish I’d figured that one out sooner. But here’s the deal, what I don’t know.”

His head lifted as she moved to stand before him, gripping the banister rail. “I got hold of the police report, Derek. The driver was drunk, so they dismissed his story as alcohol and covering his ass. He said she didn’t step in front of the car. She landed on his windshield, as if she’d been thrown there. And he said when she landed, there was a shower of sparks, like a fireworks show.”

The coldness in those dark blue eyes was back, only even more dangerous than a moment before, which had been scary enough. “A magical attack?”

“I believe so. I never brought it up with her, because you’ve seen her. Right after the baby died, she was so much worse. All we cared about was breaking her out of it. So after you were gone, even though we knew she was still messed up, we took it as a good sign that she wanted to come out here and set up a new business. And she’s functioning, talking, sometimes laughing and smiling on a good day, but there’s this big part of her that’s just locked away and gone. Neither Ramona nor I have been able to find out what really happened, and what changed her. But what you discovered and confirmed for both of us tonight, no matter how much you disapprove of my methods, is that she’s still in there. Ruby is still there.”

“She shouldn’t be taking this job. I’ll call Linda—”

“You should let her go,” Raina interrupted him. “I know that might not suit the task, but I think it will help her. To be honest, I don’t give a damn about the higher good or how many lives are at stake. It’s her turn, Derek. You fight battles to keep Darkness in balance, at bay, whatever, all the time. That’s what this is.”